Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Members of US Roman Catholic order charged with felonies for aiding child sexual abuser. For a decade, friar was allowed to massage students naked. Prosecutors have feared going after Catholic Church-NY Times

The
complaint, filed by the state’s attorney general, Kathleen Kane,
charged three leaders of the Franciscan Friars, Third Order Regulars —
Giles A. Schinelli, 73, Robert J. D’Aversa, 69, and Anthony M.
Criscitelli, 61 — with conspiracy to endanger children. The
three are accused of knowing about accusations of abuse against the
friar, Brother Stephen Baker, but of not reporting him to the police or
removing him from positions where he had access to children. In one, he
was an athletic trainer fornearly a decade at a school where he
regularly told students to undress for massages.

“They
were more concerned with protecting the image of the order and more
concerned with being in touch with lawyers than with the flock that they
served,” Ms. Kane said at a news conference Tuesday.

Lawyers
and victims groups said the prosecutions were a stark warning to the
church that covering up abuse could lead to jail time.

“This is the missing piece,” said David Clohessy, the director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.“For years, there have been pledges of reform, but we still see the
same deceitful practices because those who stay silent or lie to cover
up have not been held accountable.”

The charges against his supervisors came two weeks after the attorney general released a scathing report
by a grand jury, which found at least 50 priests and other church
employees molested hundreds of children in a small Roman Catholic
diocese in central Pennsylvania over four decades. In many cases, the
report said, their superiors, prosecutors and the police knew of the
abuses but did not act.

Brother
Baker joined the order in the early 1970s and was a teacher, coach and
athletic trainer in Roman Catholic schools in Michigan, Minnesota and
Ohiobefore coming to Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, Pa., in
1992.

Father
Schinelli, the minister provincial there from 1986 to 1994, was
notified of past accusations of sexual abuse against Brother Baker in
Ohio, and recommendations to keep him away from children, but assigned
him to the high school anyway, the grand jury found.

“They
knew who he was, and yet they put him in a place where he was like a
kid in a candy store,” said Richard M. Serbin, a lawyer who has
represented 88 victims of Brother Baker’s abuse.

The
next minister provincial, Father D’Aversa, removed Brother Baker from
the school in 2000 after new allegations, the report said, but did not
notify school officials or law enforcement.

Father
Criscitelli took over in 2002. He allowed Brother Baker to hold
overnight retreats at a local college even though, the complaint said,
the supervisor knew Brother Baker was to have no contact with children.

The
province issued a brief statement on Tuesday apologizing to the
victims. The three accused live out of state, and investigators expect
their preliminary arraignments to be scheduled in the coming days. The
current minister provincial and a lawyer for the province did not
respond to interview requests.

Monsignor
Lynn appealed the conviction to the State Supreme Court, which ruled
against him in 2015, broadening the definition of child endangerment in a
ruling last April to include even officials who had no direct
supervision. That case opened the door for the grand jury to bring
charges in this case, said Marci A. Hamilton, a professor at the
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University.

On August 4, 2015, after a protracted and contentious process, a proposed settlementin the Archdiocese of Milwaukee was announced totaling $21 millionand compensating 330 of the original 579 claimants.

The Diocese of Duluth MN filed on December 7, 2015, the most recent filing."...